


Hold Me In Your Heart Till You Understand

by UniverseOnHerShoulders



Series: Series 12 Vignettes [7]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Hugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:13:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24093397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseOnHerShoulders/pseuds/UniverseOnHerShoulders
Summary: Yaz finds the Doctor hidden away in the depths of the TARDIS, and the Doctor finds the courage to ask Yaz for the thing she needs most in the universe.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan
Series: Series 12 Vignettes [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1731406
Comments: 17
Kudos: 49





	Hold Me In Your Heart Till You Understand

The Doctor still remembers how it feels. In lonely moments, alone on the TARDIS as it drifts idly through the vortex, she allows herself to let the memory of it consume her. If she closes her eyes and rests her hands against her sternum, tucking her elbows in, she can almost fool herself ; almost convince herself that the arms pressing against her chest belong to another. The feeling of it brings tears to her eyes and makes her hearts ache with the yearning for it; the familiar, comforting presence of another person in close physical proximity to her, and their arms around her, keeping her safe from the rest of the universe.

She wants, more than anything, to be held again. Craves it so intensely that she wonders, from time to time, whether it might be prudent to seek out some illicit market or back alley on a far-distant planet, in search of someone to provide her the most simple of pleasures – a physical embrace, chaste and clothed and inherently unsexual, and yet still unspeakably intimate. But something about that rings hollow in her mind; she knows that such embraces would fail to sate her desperate, all-consuming need, because what she really needs, alongside the physical contact, is an emotional connection with the person holding her. She needs there to be intentionality behind the gesture; needs the person holding her to care about her; needs them to understand her and the person that she has become. Needs to know that they want to support her, and want to be hugging her; needs to know that they want to take care of her in the way that she takes care of those around her.

She’s a hugger, now; or at least, she supposes she is. She bounds up to strangers with alarming regularity and flings her arms around them in brief, lightning-fast moments of contact that are meant as gestures of reassurance or welcome or friendship. People often seem surprised, taken aback, or overtly hostile to the contact, and she’s been told now – in no uncertain terms – by her friends that she shouldn’t be so trusting; shouldn’t be so tactile; shouldn’t be so boundlessly enthusiastic, and so she’s reined it in, and not only with strangers; what little physical contact there had been with the team, it’s now kept to an absolute minimum, even as her body and mind scream their need for someone to hold her, touch her, brush against her; _anything_. The feeling of someone entering her personal space is intoxicating, and yet she yearns for more; needs it almost as badly as she needs to keep travelling through time and space. Needs it, but can’t find the words to express that aloud, because she can’t ask the team. How can she? They’ve made it clear to her that her desire for physical contact – casual or otherwise – is weird; annoying; unnatural, and she feels horribly self-conscious of herself at all times now; horribly aware of where precisely she is in relation to them, and the distance between them. They’d told her firmly that her exuberance and desperation are off-putting; people find it strange, and her friends are, by extension, ‘people,’ and so they must find her strange too; must have been talking about their own discomfort in the most abstract of terms in a bid to avoid hurting her feelings. She’s always known that she was ‘too much’; always suspected it; and yet somehow, their confirmation of it still stings. Their rejection is still painful, and it makes her hearts ache in her chest to think that they perceive her in such a way.

Her brief hugs with strangers, even when they are now occasionally permitted, can never bring her the solace she craves so intently. She supposes her desire is making up for lost time; in her previous form, she had never been much of a hugger and now, she reasons, she’s owed a few centuries of embraces to make up for all of those that she’d missed, or somehow been deprived of. Clara had more than done her part; Clara had spent such a long time hugging her previous self that she had, in the end, capitulated to the feeling of it; allowed herself to admit that the hugs were pleasant, and begun to initiate them herself. She still recalls the feeling of Clara’s arms around her, her companion stood on tiptoes so that she could rest her head on the Doctor’s shoulder as they hugged; or sometimes she would tuck her head under the Time Lord’s chin and huff a small, contented sigh into her chest. She wonders how that would feel now; wonders what it would be like to find herself held tightly in Yaz’s arms, or Ryan, or Graham’s. She smiles at the thought of Ryan’s arms encircling her, knowing that for once she would be the tinier person, and she wonders how it would be to find her head pressed against his shoulder; wonders how comforting it would be to feel small and safe for once.

She misses her previous companions’ embraces; misses the feel of her friends – all of them – in her arms, both providing reassurance and alleviating some of the constant, unceasing agony of her past and her present from a mind that is forever in turmoil. It’s exhausting, being the Doctor, and she wonders if the team understand that; wonders if they can ever comprehend what it’s like to bear the trauma of losing your entire race and your home; your friends; your family; your acquaintances, all wiped out in a matter of hours – and not once, either; time and time again, each time she’s ever thought there was a degree of hope, things have been ripped from under her yet again. Her people have been taken from her time and time again, and it should by rights have ceased to hurt now; the wound should have scabbed over; and yet each time it is agonising to know that every part of Gallifrey has been lost.

The Doctor wonders if her friends will ever understand that the burden of commemorating her people and their shared history follows her around like a physical weight on her shoulders, refusing to allow her a moment’s levity, or so it seems, or a moment’s joy. The pressure of it all – to uphold their memory, to be the Doctor, to show her friends the universe and keep them safe – sometimes brings her to the verge of tears, and she yearns to simply be held; to be held, and told that it’s all alright; that she’s doing a good job and that she’s doing the right things. Yearns to be provided with the solace that she had so enjoyed providing to her companions; she still remembers one particularly memorable hug in a Viking village with Clara, and the recollection of it, spinning on the spot with Clara warm and safe in her arms, brings her to tears each time.

She knows, too, that in each moment where the opportunity passes, she grows a little more resentful; with each moment that no one seems to notice what she needs, she feels a little more angry at her friends for their apparent obliviousness. It’s irrational, certainly, but she desperately wants her friends to notice that she’s struggling; desperately wants them to notice so that she isn’t required to burden them with the agony of trying to find the right words to explain what she needs, or why. She’s not alright, and perhaps they might seem to have an awareness of that – after the way she’d spoken to them that morning, snapping at them as they’d tried to help, she’s sure of it – but they don’t seem to know how to provide what she needs. They don’t seem to know the one thing she craves more than any other, and she thinks, wildly and unreasonably of Clara, and feels a stab of resentment towards her friends for the simple crime of not being Clara Oswald, or even Bill Potts, both of whom knew that sometimes a hug is the simplest, easiest medicine you can provide. Sometimes a hug can lift the burden on two hearts.

“Doctor?”

Yaz’s voice cuts into her stupor, and she realises that she’s been tracked down by at least one of her friends, possibly more. She hopes, somewhat guiltily, that it’s only Yaz; she’s not sure whether she has the energy for three of them, especially not as she struggles to hold herself together. She’d hoped that the garage would be the last place anyone would look for her, and yet she’s wrong; here’s Yaz, edging past the motorbikes they’d used to chase down Daniel Barton, a concerned expression on her face as she squints through the gloom at the Doctor, her worry intensifying. It’s then, and only then, that the Doctor realises she’s crying, and in the semi-darkness she wipes her hand over her eyes, hoping Yaz won’t notice.

“Why are you crying?” Yaz asks bluntly, still several metres away, and the Doctor sighs, swiping her palm over her cheeks as she realises that there’s no pulling the wool over the police officer’s eyes. “What’s wrong? Why are you hiding all the way out here? We’re worried about you, Doctor. Dead worried. You’ve been all weird for days now; not yourself. Snappy and stuff.”

“I just…” the Doctor sighs again, running a hand through her hair as Yaz finally makes it past the motorcycles and plonks herself down on the battered old sofa beside her. It lets out a loud groaning noise, and somewhere in the Doctor’s mind, she registers that she ought to replace it. “It’s not always easy, you know.”

“What isn’t?” Yaz frowns, not understanding, and the Doctor fights the irrational surge of anger that rushes through her. How could Yaz understand? How could she possibly understand the depth of the Doctor’s feelings from those few scarce words? She needs to explain, and she knows that, but she isn’t sure how.

“Being me.”

“Of course it’s not,” Yaz says gently, and the tenderness in her tone makes the Doctor’s eyes fill with tears again. “You’re… I don’t know, you’re just a million miles an hour and you try to pretend everything’s alright, even when it’s not. You think we don’t notice, don’t you? You think we don’t see the way that you’re struggling. I know you want to find the Master, but you need to let us help you and take care of you or you’re going to just… I don’t know, burn out completely.”

“I know,” the Doctor says softly, fighting to keep her tears from spilling down her cheeks. “I know, I just… I don’t know how.”

“How to what? Let us help?” Yaz smiles encouragingly at her, reaching over and resting a hand casually on the Doctor’s arm, skimming her thumb over the fabric of her undershirt. The contact is electrifying, and it’s all that the Doctor can do not to hold her arms out like a child; she balls her hands into fists and folds her arms tightly, fighting the urge. Yaz’s hand remains where it is though, and her friend offers her a reassuring smile. “We might not be Time Lords, but we aren’t totally hopeless.”

“No, I know, I-”

“And we want to make sure you’re alright. If there’s anything we can do… anything at all-”

“A hug,” the words slip from the Doctor’s mouth before she can stop them, and she loathes herself for how desperate she sounds. “Please. I just… I just need… I want… just someone to…”

“A hug?” Yaz frowns, and the Doctor feels an immediate stab of regret; of course Yaz won’t want to hug her, of course she won’t want to-

“Forget it, it’s just…”

“I can do that,” Yaz says softly, giving her arm a gentle squeeze. “It just seems… I don’t know, not enough.”

“It is.”

“Well then, I hope this’ll be alright,” Yaz says in a low, encouraging voice, turning to face the Doctor properly and holding out her arms with a grin. “One Yaz hug, coming up.”

The Doctor freezes for a moment; despite the need coursing through her, she’s suddenly nervous, as though-

“Oh, come here,” Yaz rolls her eyes, pulling her into her arms without warning, and the Doctor melts. She sags forward into her friend’s arms, the tension leaving her at once, and as Yaz’s hands settle on her back, she lets out a silent sigh of contentment as she finds herself held carefully but tightly, her head resting on her friend’s shoulder. “There.”

She starts to cry again; she can’t help it. There’s something so wonderfully reassuring about the feeling of being held that she finds her defences falling and the sheer frustration and relief of it all overwhelms her. The pain that stems from the loss of Gallifrey and her oldest friend spills forth, along with her fears about not being good enough; not being ‘the Doctor’ enough; not being fun enough. She feels a stab of shame as the tears roll down her cheeks and onto Yaz’s jumper, splashing across the bright fabric, but her friend doesn’t protest, or let go, or push her away. Yaz only holds her with the utmost tenderness, murmuring quiet, soothing nothings.

“M’sorry,” the Doctor mumbles, embarrassed by her own tears, shaking her head and struggling to pull away, but Yaz only holds onto her all the more tightly, and something about that is wonderfully reassuring. For the first time in a long time, she feels safe. “M’sorry…”

“It’s alright,” Yaz says soothingly, starting to rub slow, calming patterns on her back. “It’s alright. Take as long as you need. I promise, everything’s going to be alright.”


End file.
